Friday, 30 January 2015

The "island" that is Kelham Island was created by the construction of a mill race from the River Don that rums through the district. At one time it was the home of numerous steel works - some of the specialist steel used in the construction of Brooklyn Bridge was forged on Kelham Island - but in the mid twentieth century the area was in industrial free-fall. Thirty years after my photograph was taken, the area is now alive with cafe-bars, smart new apartments and art centres.

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Back in the early 1980s the Kelham Island district of Sheffield was only just discovering that regeneration wasn't confined to religious deities and science fiction heroes. The old factories and workshops were closing and falling down but new life was beginning to seep into those old stone streets. The talisman was the old Alma pub - the building centre right in my photograph - which had just been bought by Dave Wickett and Bruce Bentley and transformed into the Fat Cat, one of the first and finest real ale pubs in the country.

Monday, 26 January 2015

All that wall and so little window. Not because windows were taxed - we are a century and a half after that curious time in fiscal history. But because windows let in the cold, played host to the east wind as it made its way from the steppes of Russia to the Atlantic.

Friday, 23 January 2015

Canal folk always call it the cut. That precise, no-nonsense term for a canal provides a wonderfully efficient description, especially in the industrial north where the murky water seems to carve a path through the soot-stained stones and bricks. How can you not look at such a scene and not hum Ewen MacColl's Dirty Old Town?

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

I think his name was Jimmy Porter, but I can't be sure. I know Jimmy Porter was a character in Look Back In Anger, but he was also a lad who was at school with me who had a Saturday job in the market. There was nobody who could fill a bag of spuds with the speed of Jimmy Porter. That might be a quote from Osborne and it might not be.

Monday, 19 January 2015

So long ago. It seemed like a black and white world. There would have been colours I suppose, but those colours would have looked all wrong, like they did in early technicolour movies. Northern markets were greyscale places, but there was a warmth to them which came from more than the overhead electric heaters.

Friday, 16 January 2015

Albert Corrigan came to the seaside resort of Bridlington in the early 1960s and developed a fanfare along the sea front. Brid amusements never had the scale of their larger cousins in resorts like Scarborough or the west coast resorts of Blackpool and Morecambe. But the speed and the lights, that smell of the electric spark mixed with the sea-salt air, that over-loud music: all those are common to all northern resorts, irrespective of size.

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

I am not sure what all these people were watching, but it would appear that I was watching their bottoms! In my defence I would point out that I was merely interested in the composition, the way that the eye is pulled up to the middle of the photograph and then thrown off into the sea or the sands or whatever lies over the wall.

Monday, 12 January 2015

“It was a breezy Friday in July 1872. The canal, which ran north and south, reflected a blue and white sky. Towards the bridge, from the north came a long narrow canal-boat roofed with tarpaulins; and towards the bridge, from the south came a similar craft, sluggishly creeping. The towing-path was a morass of sticky brown mud, for, in the way of rain, that year was breaking the records of a century and a half. Thirty yards in front of each boat an unhappy skeleton of a horse floundered its best in the quagmire.”

Friday, 9 January 2015

The Trent and Mersey Canal bisects the Potteries - the Five Towns of Arnold Bennett - like a deep scar. But like so many scars, it is a sign of life, for it is the canal that brought industrial life to the area. It was the canal - financed in part by Josiah Wedgwood and build by James Brindley - that made it economically possible to bring the heavy China Clay into the district and safely transport the delicate bone china out to markets throughout the world. So many of the pot banks have now gone. But the scar remains.

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

So much about this particular photograph says West Yorkshire to me. It is a back street and - mathematical impossibility or not - West Yorkshire always seems to have more back streets than front streets. There are inclines, and West Yorkshire always seems to have cornered the market in inclines. But those are bricks and not stone. And my old negatives always come in strips of five or six - and this particular shot is surrounded by pictures of Stoke or Hanley or Burslem. So we will content ourselves with the Arnold Bennett description of the "Five Towns" and in that case it must date back to the early 1970s.

Monday, 5 January 2015

There is something about Bridlington Harbour that has always appealed to me. It has something to do with the fact that the holiday crowds and their pleasure steamers rub friendly shoulders with the working fishing boats. And then there are the rowing boats, fluttering between their grown-up cousins like hyperactive children. Lovely place.

Friday, 2 January 2015

Another back street with cobbles, this one was taken a decade earlier. Once again the lack of parked cars and stranded wheelie-bins is noticeable, but this time the stone sets have almost an animalistic feel to them - like the thick armour plates on the back of an armadillo. As for location, I am not entirely sure after all these years, but the stone and the hills cry out Yorkshire.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

A street: probably in Halifax, probably in the 1980s. It would be difficult to take such a photograph today as the street would be garishly decorated with a line of bright metallic cars and set after set of red, blue and green plastic wheelie-bins. But thirty years ago there was nothing to interfere with the algebraic pattern of stone cobbles other than the hanging sheet which seems to gather greyness from its surroundings.

About Me

One time lecturer, writer on European Affairs and bus conductor, Alan Burnett now divides his time between walking the dog and a little harmless blogging. His News From Nowhere Blog has been running since 2006 and acts as a showcase for his ranting and writing and his photographs old and new.